I walked with my traveler in the silver conditions
toward the middle of winter
beside the lagoon. Pods of finished
lupine, approving, rattling nicely. I had never
—let’s see. I had not been
so this outside with anyone—
—he had such good posture, like a meadowlark,
and the meadowlarks themselves (the hero-looking
black footprints on their chests
clicked their tails shut shut open shut.
How do you learn to love another person.
Was this my possibly. Might have been,
but still. I mourned
the idea that I was not him,
wrapped in the long changes„ a sympathizer,
and feared the earth loved him
better than me (because he was so
far outside (I feared
the earth loved him better than me.
Not so whispered the missingness.
Not at all rattled the dried.
But it takes such work to open the heart even a little,
pretty much most of a life.
Look at this will you. So many shadows
on the outside—black stripes on the goldfinches,
warblers with their lone ranger masks on,
and so many shadows in the pre-lagoon area,
grasses shone into which they flew,
spikelets, panicles and the long awns
reaching into the sometimes,
that it can be right and wrong at the same time,
outer and inner, that it can be “next to”—
what if I just did that, a little.
What if I just stood close to him, like texture.
It’s more the men
who like to stand gazing at the waterfowl
—(buffleheads and one big smart ruddy duck).
It’s more the women who understand the lagoon.
Says to itself,
watch me hold more. Says to itself,
(, ,) all night I needed boundaries, love.
I was scared of being the ocean.
And the shine kept pulling off the luminous textures:
outside inside out I’m all confused.
Come on in said the willing underground.
Open up, just a little.
There are those in whom creation seems extra;
he was one of those.
Hard not to get lost in him like a dime on the beach
if you kept feeling bright
as you sank down—
(now the dime is a you.
The problem of falling in love is: the pronouns go.
On the beach, bumpy starfish were clinging to each other.
Kelp tangled up in itself like doomed languages.
Whales sounded and surfaced, heading toward Magdalena,—
but you had been threatened by doubleness and extra,
were soothed by singularity,
had wanted to be strong in the middle, like a Wednesday,
maybe you could just.
For five minutes. What if you stood
beside him just a little.
All right went the agencies of eagerness,
dune grass spreading,
the stones beneath you with their weak weak color,
the wintery seeds stayed close to other seeds
and lived on vanishing,
once they had felt the presence of the others
they didn’t need anything
they couldn’t add to their existence, in any way—